Why is Eskom unplugged?

IN ONE of their several statements issued yesterday, Eskom said the company’s prognosis was that the power system would take up to 10 days to recover from the effects of the recent industrial action, once all staff returned to work today.

Which raises the question: what, or who, is behind the latest round of mass power cuts, quaintly termed load shedding? Is it a manifestation of the utility’s incompetence, corruption and simple inability to provide a reliable power supply? Or is it sabotage by disgruntled employees?

Eskom is unequivocal: “The generation and distribution of electricity across Eskom’s network is constrained… due to the acts of sabotage and intimidation that characterise the current industrial action by members of the trade unions.”

The National Union of Metalworkers of SA, who with the National Union of Mineworkers and Solidarity are the main unions at Eskom, did not mince its words in rejecting this assertion.

It said: “Eskom has no evidence to back up allegations that our members are responsible for sabotaging power supply.

“It is no secret that an Eskom executive in 2008, during the first phase of load shedding, manipulated that process for his own benefit.

“It is alleged that one of their own executives benefited from the load-shedding crisis through the sale of diesel…

“How do we know that the executives at Eskom are not responsible for sabotaging their own network?”

Eskom’s wage “offer” of 0% to its workers is ludicrous, however tenuous its financial issues.

The utility isn’t exactly an example of fiduciary rectitude. From being chosen as the global utility of the year in 2001, it has been downhill since. It has been gripped by allegations of corruption, mismanagement and looting by some senior executives, as revealed in the Gupta scandal.

A few years ago Eskom had 80 top executives – today there are more than 500. The workforce has ballooned from 33 000 to almost 48 000. The energy output has not matched the expansion in human capital.

Who can blame ordinary workers who saw former chief executive Brian Molefe receiving more than R9.4 million total remuneration in the 2015/16 financial year, followed by the controversial R30m pension payout?

Or chief executive Brian Dames, who earned R22.77m in salaries, bonuses, incentives and a R5m payout upon leaving in 2014?